World class Mexican dancer seeks to change ballet

In this Aug. 15, 2012 photo, Isaac Hernandez, Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer, rehearses in Mexico City. Hernandez wants to change ballet in Mexico and aims to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
— AP

In this Aug. 15, 2012 photo, Isaac Hernandez, Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer, rehearses in Mexico City. Hernandez wants to change ballet in Mexico and aims to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
/ AP

In this Aug. 15, 2012 photo, Isaac Hernandez, Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer, center, jokes with his younger brother Esteban Hernandez, right, and ballet master Uwe Fisher-Pettitt as they rehearse in Mexico City. Hernandez wants to change ballet in Mexico and aims to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)— AP

In this Aug. 15, 2012 photo, Isaac Hernandez, Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer, center, jokes with his younger brother Esteban Hernandez, right, and ballet master Uwe Fisher-Pettitt as they rehearse in Mexico City. Hernandez wants to change ballet in Mexico and aims to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
/ AP

In this Aug. 15, 2012 photo, Isaac Hernandez, Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer, rehearses in Mexico City. Hernandez wants to change ballet in Mexico and aims to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)— AP

In this Aug. 15, 2012 photo, Isaac Hernandez, Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer, rehearses in Mexico City. Hernandez wants to change ballet in Mexico and aims to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
/ AP

In this Aug. 15, 2012 photo, Isaac Hernandez, Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer, right, rehearses with ballet master Uwe Fisher-Pettitt in Mexico City. Hernandez wants to change ballet in Mexico and aims to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)— AP

In this Aug. 15, 2012 photo, Isaac Hernandez, Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer, right, rehearses with ballet master Uwe Fisher-Pettitt in Mexico City. Hernandez wants to change ballet in Mexico and aims to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
/ AP

In this Aug. 15, 2012 photo, Isaac Hernandez, Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer, and San Francisco Ballet soloist Victoria Anayan rehearse in Mexico City. Hernandez wants to change ballet in Mexico and aims to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)— AP

In this Aug. 15, 2012 photo, Isaac Hernandez, Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer, and San Francisco Ballet soloist Victoria Anayan rehearse in Mexico City. Hernandez wants to change ballet in Mexico and aims to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
/ AP

In this Aug. 15, 2012 photo, Isaac Hernandez, Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer, poses for a portrait between rehearsals in Mexico City. Hernandez wants to change ballet in Mexico and aims to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)— AP

In this Aug. 15, 2012 photo, Isaac Hernandez, Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer, poses for a portrait between rehearsals in Mexico City. Hernandez wants to change ballet in Mexico and aims to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
/ AP

MEXICO CITY  At 22, Isaac Hernandez had danced in Havana, in Moscow, and even in Jackson, Mississippi, but Mexico's most internationally acclaimed male ballet dancer had performed in his home country exactly once - when he was 14.

"I find myself asking why is it that I can dance anywhere in the world, except in Mexico?" he said during a recent interview.

The answer: Mexico doesn't have a history of celebrating ballet.

So even though the Guadalajara native begins a new job this week as a soloist for the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam, he has spent much of the past year working to change the profile of ballet in Mexico to cultivate more talent and performances. Hernandez has sought to lead his countrymen to the practice barre in hopes they will grab on and get hooked, just as he did as a boy pirouetting beneath the clotheslines on his parents' uneven concrete patio.

"For an 8-year-old kid to say, `I want to be a ballet dancer in Mexico,' was madness at that point," Hernandez said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Little has changed since, even as the rest of Latin America has exploded with ballet talent, producing male virtuosos such as Jose Manuel Carreno and Carlos Acosta of Cuba and Argentines Herman Cornejo and Julio Bocca, who now directs the national ballet in Uruguay.

Mexico, known for its frenetic, heel-stomping folklorico dance, has had its share of prima ballerinas, including Elisa Carrillo, a principal dancer for the Berlin Ballet. But it's virtually unheard of for Mexico to produce world-class male dancers. The image persists that ballet is for elites in a country of mostly working class and poor - and definitely not for boys.

So Hernandez decided to stage his own professional performances in Mexico, and also traveled throughout the country to give workshops to students at universities and schools of the arts.

"That has given me a sense of the reality and the needs that they have," he said. "And one of the greatest needs that they have is to have somebody to look up to."

Hernandez, a slender and chiseled 5-foot-10 with wide-set eyes and a mop of black ringlets, grew up as the sixth of 10 children in a ballet family. His father, Hector, danced in Mexico and then for several U.S. companies, including the Harlem Dance Theater and the Houston ballet, where he performed with Hernandez's mother, Laura Elena. The couple run a dance studio in Guadalajara.

Hernandez left home at 12 to study at the Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia, where he started to rack up awards and recognition, including a gold medal at the USA International Ballet Competition, one of the major international competitions, at age 16.

Bojan Spassoff, Rock School's president, said Hernandez has always been a dancer of power and precision, showing off a photograph during rehearsal of him soaring through the air in splits.

"Like a rocket," Spassoff said with pride.

In his 2009 debut with the San Francisco Ballet, Hernandez was chosen to dance Tchaikovsky with prima ballerina Tina LeBlanc in one of her final performances. One reviewer called him "fresh-faced" and "a brilliant corps dancer."